BeyondRAID: Storage Without Limitations

BeyondRAID technology, built into every Drobo, delivers all of the benefits
of traditional RAID, while providing much more and leaving many of the
limitations behind. This next-generation of redundant storage technology brings
together enhanced protection, reliability, expandability, and ease-of-use.

Drobos, based on BeyondRAID, interact with computing systems in the same
manner as storage arrays using traditional RAID, so installing a Drobo allows
you to maintain your current operating system and file system. This eliminates
the challenges and costs when moving to a new storage technology.

Problems with Traditional RAID

RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) was developed in the 1980s to
pool disk drives for increased capacity and reliability for data storage. Since
then, RAID has been a huge success, preventing single disk drive failures from
causing data loss, and has been used in almost every enterprise data center.

Unfortunately, the complexity of RAID has made it challenging for small
businesses and consumers to effectively use the technology. RAID has a high
learning curve with many options. There's RAID levels 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, and 60
along with unfamiliar terminology like striping, mirroring, and parity.

Aside from complexity, these are the primary challenges with traditional
RAID:

Lock-in of RAID levels. To change RAID levels, most storage arrays require
the data to be moved off of it, reconfigured, and then moved back on. If you
want to move to RAID 6 from RAID 5 for protection against two drive failures,
it's a reinitialize and start over.

Lack of expandability. Once drives are configured into a RAID pool, that is
it. If you want to add more storage capacity, the solution is to create a new
RAID pool, leaving you with another chunk of storage to manage - or you can just
reinitialize and start over.

Debilitated state after a drive failure. When a drive fails, most RAID
implementations enter a state where data loss will occur if another drive
falters before the user replaces the failed drive. Also, performance is hampered
when in this debilitated state.

Moving Beyond RAID

Drobo's BeyondRAID technology solves these fundamental issues with
traditional RAID while delivering much more. Built on an advanced virtualization
platform, BeyondRAID chooses the correct protection algorithm based on data
availability needs at any given moment.Since the technology works at the block
level, it can write blocks of data that alternate between data protection
approaches.

If you need to add storage capacity to a Drobo, simply insert additional disk
drives or replace the smallest disks with larger ones - no need to change RAID
levels, purchase a new storage array or go through the complex administration of
pooling RAID groups. The BeyondRAID feature even allows IT managers to switch
from single to dual disk redundancy with a single click, thereby ensuring
enterprise-level dual parity data protection if required. If a drive happens to
fail, Drobo will automatically re-layout the data to return to a protected state
without any user interaction.